Scott Haraburda's Reviews > Purple Cow: Transform Your Business by Being Remarkable

This was an interesting book that many people I know recommended to me. It has an interesting cover, with a remarkable background of a purple and white cow design. The author states that most products today are boring, quickly forgotten by customers. What we need is a product that people remember and will talk about it. As implied by the title of this book, when you see a Purple Cow (a remarkable product or idea), you won’t forget it. That’s because products are like cows; they’re either remarkable or invisible. Who’s going to buy an invisible product?

Today, a product, or idea, becomes successful if other customers talk about it. They tell friends and family all about it, which in return makes a product well known. This concept helped me understand my own personal buying decisions. For example, a few years ago, I bought a historical fiction book. It wasn’t a book I ever heard of, and I didn’t want to buy a book at that time. So, why did I buy that book? It was because a colleague of mine, someone I respected very much, suggested that I should read it. I took his advice, bought that book, and really enjoyed it. I suggested the book to others, and they too bought and read it. Of interesting note, this historical fiction book later won several prestigious awards and became a blockbuster movie a few years later – yes, I saw the movie and enjoyed it too, seeing it a few times.

Now back to the Purple Cow book. The author believes that manufacturers now can no longer successfully market their products to the typical consumer by applying the traditional media marketing strategy. He suggests that most of the consumers are happy with what they have, and that they’re bored with commercials. As such, these consumers today ignore all unwanted advertisements, regardless of what media it is in, including TV, radio and magazines. One of the best ways to effectively advertise a product a few decades ago was through television commercials, with quality profitable products marked “As Seen on TV”. This was because television back then changed the way that products were marketed to the consumers and how the products were created. However, the impact of television commercials faded since then, along with radios, newspapers, and magazines ads.

The author believes that the only way you can sell products today is to market to the consumer who is looking for a product to solve one of more problems. This means that advertisements must be targeted to the right people (not to a huge market) in the right way with relevant content. These ads also need to be presented where consumers are actually looking for a product. Targeting ads to everyone is a problem since not everyone wants to buy the same product, meaning advertising money is wasted on people not willing to purchase a product based upon the ad.

Although I found the content of this book easy to read and entertaining, it lacked a secret formula for marketing today, such as a successful process for creating a Purple Cow. The author does provide case studies with real stories of companies succeeding with Purple Cows and of companies failing by not remaining remarkable with new Purple Cows. Bottom line is that companies needing to remain profitable in the future must be both innovative and remarkable, not only today but in the future.

I enjoyed reading this book, learning some about people’s buying decisions, and believe others will too.